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Is This The Right Cable To Connect My Pc To HDTV?

superstar

Posted 08 May 2008 - 12:58 PM

superstar

Member

Member

716 posts

Hi,

I just bought a new 37" Lcd HDTV set and would like to connect my computer tower to it so I can use my tv as a monitor instead of my lame 17" Crt monitor. The following is information from the tv manual on how to do so:

Well my problem is I basically can't find a VGA male to male cable that has a ferrite core on the internet. & the manual states that it has to be a ferrite cable [See Pic 1] in order for it to meet standards. With that being said I've actually found an SVGA male to male ferrite cable at monoprice.com:

The tv manual only mentions using a VGA cable not SVGA. So I don't know what the difference between VGA cables and SVGA cables are. I mean assume they're the same thing being that the connector ends on a VGA male to male cable, and a SVGA male to male cable look 100% identical. To keep this short I'd just like to ask if I could use the SVGA male to male cable from monoprice.com to connect my pc to tv? Or is there some sort of big difference between VGA and SVGA cables that would render it useless, or damage my pc/tv if I buy it?

superstar

Posted 10 May 2008 - 02:27 PM

Looks like it wouldn't work to me. It says you want a D-Sub 15 pin connector and that isn't what is shown at monoprice.com: Large View

The actual image shows a 3-row 15-pin connector which IS like the one at monoprice.com. If that is the type of 15-pin connector you need, then...

This may be what you want:

6' SVGA (15-pin) Cable w/ Ferrite

If you need different lengths, then check these VGA Cables. I'm sure these are the ones you want.

Ron

The cable you recommended looks exactly like the one I found on monoprice.com. I'm just worried about using a svga male to male cable from my pc to my hdtv because they don't mention anything about svga in my hdtv's manual. As you can see they only refer to it as VGA:

The problem is there's some sort of misrepresentation in the cable industry about pc monitor cables. They seem to call every cable, video card output, and tv input as simply "vga". Regardless of what resolution a monitor or video card is able to support, they are commonly referred to as just being VGA by cable/video card companies. The naming conventions listed below never really caught on with the general public and thus even the most High End 3-D graphic cards from Companies like NVIDIA or ATI have what they term a VGA port (in addition to a DVI port in many cases), even though the card may output resolutions greater than 1920 x 1440. There is a wide array of pc video outputs/inputs such as:

The highest resolution my pc video card supports is 1280 x 1024. That would signify that my video card's output is "SXGA". I still don't know if that means it's backwards compatible with any 15 pin VGA/SVGA/etc cable. The picture below is the back of my pc. I use the agp video card not the integrated video on the I/O plate. [By the way my AGP card is upside down]

& this is the back VGA input on my HDTV.

So in the end I'm still stuck wondering if I can use the following cable from monoprice.com to connect my pc's video card to the vga input on my hdtv.

Major Payne

Posted 10 May 2008 - 08:46 PM

Major Payne

Retired Staff

Retired Staff

5,307 posts

You still didn't look closely at the cables I recommended. There is one pin missing on the one you see at monoprice.com which may or may not be significant. The ones I recommended all have 15 full pins and are ok to use. Don't worry about the convention of VGA and SVGA for these cables. As you see on this page the title is VGA Cables, but all cables under it or labelled SVGA and each one has the same pin arrangement as you need to use. There are 3-rows of 5-pins each. Not the same as the D Sun 15-pin connector which has 1-row of 8-pins and 1-row of 7-pins.

The cable connectors at monospace.com seem to be missing 1-pin in the middle row. Look carefully at the image about using this D-sub 15-pin VGA Cable that you posted above. This is where it says this cable must have the ferrite cores as they don't normally come with them. The SVGA cables do come with the ferrite cores to be compliant for shielding.

If both your computer and monitor have DVI connections, I would go with those.